What are the main key changes in the Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 guidance?

Following consultation with the Education Sector, the DFE have updated the KCSiE guidance with a number of notable changes that aim to improve the approach to safeguarding in school.

The additional 13 pages of guidance in this year’s guidance need to be read and changes incorporated into your own policies and procedures to ensure compliance.

As well as various minor changes there are three key changes that schools need to consider and be aware of:

1 Child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment

The KCSiE 2022 guidance now incorporates the previously separate September 2021 document ‘Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges”, which illustrates that this continues to be a problem that is experienced in education settings and something that we all need to ensure there is a focus upon.

There has also been a change throughout the guidance from the reference “peer-on-peer” abuse being replaced by “child-on-child” abuse.  Whilst this may seem an insignificant change, the term “peer-on-peer” abuse used previously had caused confusion about whether it may refer to both children and adults.  The change to “child-on-child” abuse has clarified the guidance is referring to children.

Schools should update any policies referring to “peer-on-peer” abuse to now state “child-on-child” abuse.

2 Safeguarding training for governors and trustees

Whilst KCSiE guidance has always made clear that there is a requirement for senior board level management and understanding of safeguarding within all education settings.  The 2022 guidance has set out more detailed requirements for governing bodies, proprietors or trustees to be provided with appropriate safeguarding and child protection training, both at the point of induction and then through regular updates training.

In terms of what is appropriate training, the guidance states that the “training should equip them with the knowledge to provide strategic challenge to test and assure themselves that the safeguarding policies and procedures in place in schools and colleges are effective and support the delivery of a robust whole school approach to safeguarding.”

In the past many schools/trusts have provided their governors/trustee’s with the same training as staff.  However, trustee’s and governors need different training, rather than needing operational knowledge of how safeguarding should work they need the training to be able to take an overview of how safeguarding is being managed in setting to be able to support their DSL.

In terms of how regular is regular?  There is no frequency specified in the guidance, but our view would be annual training updates should be considered.

3 Online searches on shortlisted candidates

There is a new requirement in terms of safer recruitment checks on shortlisted candidates, which states that “As part of the shortlisting process, schools and colleges should consider carrying out an online search (including social media) as part of their due diligence on shortlisted candidates.  This may help identify any incidents or issues that have happened, and are publicly available online, which the school or college might want to explore with the applicant at interview.”

Whilst the guidance states schools ‘should consider’, as this is statutory guidance, it would be our advice that schools should undertake these checks on all shortlisted candidates. 

School’s will need to decide how they plan to carry out these checks, both in terms of who will carry them out (should it be someone inhouse or could they outsource these checks) and in terms of what needs to be included in an online check.

It isn’t clear in the guidance is what/how and how far back online checks should be made. When determining this it is important to consider what the purpose of the online checks are for. 

The online checks should help to identify any incidents or issues that would either harm the reputation of the school and/or make the candidate unsuitable for employment.  The guidance states that schools need to look at what is ‘publicly available’, meaning what can be accessed by anyone through the use of normal search engines/websites rather than information that is held on private social media accounts.  We would be suggesting starting with a general google search, then looking at social media sites such as Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok etc. 

There is also no guidance on how far back a search should go, and in the absence of any clear guidance we would suggest checking back up to 5 years as a starting point. 

Once the search has been carried out, anything that is flagged of concern should be raised at interview with the candidate in a similar way to any disclosures that may be returned on a DBS form.  The interview panel should ask the candidate about the findings, note down their responses and then consider/risk assess whether they feel the information affects the candidates suitability for the post they have applied for.

Finally it is important to note that the new KCSiE guidance comes into force in September and so it is important that you review your current policies and procedures to ensure they reflect the changes in the update guidance by this date.